Lindsey Royce: No Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

You opted for the straight fuck,

lust with no intimacy & mind-game

mystery, even though you tried to please.

I loved dearly the illusion you were,

mannish boy as John Lee howls,

masculine, smarts, a tender sculptor—

Hard to know if I’d be kissed or kicked,

yet I cherished you despite sullen silences,

ambivalent silences, lonely silences.

After a day at your favorite museum,

& a drive with talk polite & careful,

mostly in the seconds between songs,

we settled at your place to watch Louie CK.

I flopped in a recliner opposite the couch.

You took a chair behind me, where I couldn’t

see you, dark but for the TV’s bluish haze.

We hooted, separately, faces flushed with fun,

But whenever I’d turn, you’d evade my eyes,

feign hard concentration on the stand-up act—

So we could share a bed but never a laugh:

this, your most punishing silence.

Copyright 2018 Lindsey Royce

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Lindsey Royce